You can legally use marijuana in the state of Washington, and soon you likely will be able to use marijuana across the entire country of Canada.
And yet, if you are traveling from Canada into Washington and you admit to a border officer that you have smoked marijuana in the past, you can get blocked from coming into the U.S. And not just for now, but forever.
Welcome to the latest contradiction between local, state and federal policy when it comes to marijuana. It’s such a mess that only one area of the economy seems certain to benefit.
“I’m expecting my business to boom,” immigration attorney Len Saunders told The Sacramento Bee.
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Moral Turpitude
The Bee reported that a music journalist in British Columbia recently was denied access into the United States at the Washington border because he admitted to having smoked marijuana in the past.
The man, 36-year-old Alan Ranta, said officials handcuffed and questioned him. He added that officials told him he had committed a crime of “moral turpitude.”
Ranta was not carrying marijuana at the time. Neither was Matthew Harvey, a medical marijuana user who admitted to U.S. officials he had used marijuana recreationally in the past. He was barred for life from entering the U.S. in 2014.
If this strict application of law continues, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have a difficult time coming to his next meeting in the U.S. He admitted long ago to partaking of cannabis. Unless he…